I was kind of psyched last spring, when I first heard about Zoo. I haven't read very many books of James Patterson's, mostly because I don't particularly like his style of writing. He is very prolific, however, so I figured, what the hell, if he's lending his name to a series, maybe he's got enough dough to take a risk and do something entertaining. I guess since I watched Zoo all summer long, it was maybe entertaining enough. I mean, it was this and Whispers all summer, because I didn't have enough cash to go on vacation, so I guess there wasn't much else to do. But let me get into the summation.
Zoo is a one-hour series on CBS. It was on Tuesday nights all summer long, but don't go looking for it now, because the season finale was last night. Zoo is, well, not about a Zoo. It's about how a mutation starts making the various species of animals in the world more intelligent, and how they start attacking us instead of each other. A female, french version of Jack Ryan (yea, basically, she's an analyst tossed into the field) gets a team of people together who are basically just the first-line defense against the wave of killer animals, and she only picks them because they already know what's going on. The first season is all about how the team tries to find a cure for the mutation, while the animal kingdom goes apeshit.
I first started having issues with Zoo when the african lions dragged one of the characters into a tree. If you watch nature shows at all (and I know a lot of people do), it's pretty clear that african lions don't drag prey into trees. That's a leopard thing. African lions are too heavy, or don't have the right claws, or some reason, but they have a devilishly hard time climbing trees, because that's where leopards drag their kills to keep them away from lions. This was pretty much the first or second episode, so I knew I was going to have some issues with the 'reality' behind Zoo.
Then, they keep trying to find a cure for what they keep calling a mutation. They make a very specific case during the dialogue why this isn't a virus, but a mutation, brought on by some weird genetically modified feed that a company has introduced into the food chain, but then they spend the whole season looking for a 'cure,' which doesn't make any sense. Also, there's like a TON of rhinos, elephants, lions and bears roaming through the cities, which makes for great visuals, but come on. Where the hell are all these african-safari animals coming from? Then you got the humans talking about how the animals have stopped feeding on each other, over the course of months, and that's just bunk. There aren't enough humans to support the average population of dogs and cats in a city, let alone larger animals like bears and lions, and the animals would have quickly starved to death without eating each other. But aside from all the technical issues in the show, it's basically just a rip-off of Hitchcock's "The Birds."
Aside from all the technical issues and gaffs, there was one thing that really bugged me. There are several instances of birds attacking planes so badly that they fall out of the sky, which just seems ridiculous to me. One, it happened so many times in the series that it started getting predictable. The only way to bring down a plane like that is for birds (or bats, whatever) to fly into the plane's engine intakes and muck up the engines. I know this used to be a problem, and I think there was some discussion about covering up the engine intakes, but let's be clear. You're taking about a small bird or bat, slamming into something the size of a 747, traveling hundreds of miles an hour. It would be like a bug hitting the windshield of your car. Does it make you fly off the road into a ditch every time it happens? No. No matter how many of them there are, it's not going to bring the plane down unless the engines fail. The only thing you'd need to do to prevent it, is install engine intake covers so the birds couldn't gum up the works.
That's not even covering the simple facts, like, birds and bats can't fly that high because there's not enough oxygen to breathe. They'd quickly pass out and fall from the sky just trying to get that high up, and why would they even sacrifice themselves? The whole point of a mutation is that, if the mutation is beneficial, the animal survives a little more easily, and passes it onto its offspring and the species survives a little better out there. Any mutation that makes the animal become a suicidal killing machine that stops eating normally in order to destroy humans sure as hell isn't going to survive better than its normal cousins for very long. So passing on the mutation would be absolutely impossible, and any animal that had it would quickly pass into extinction. But I guess that doesn't make for a very entertaining series, does it?
You know, I keep wanting to cast aside the technical contradictions and just get to things like acting talent and entertainment value, but I just can't seem to do it. I don't really identify with any of the characters, none of them particularly stand out, and though well acted, I can't seem to get my head around any of their individual motivations. Basically, if you want to see a lot of wildlife threaten humans in the most outlandish fashion possibly imaginable, over and over again, watch Zoo when it comes up on DVD or netflix or something, because I don't know if it will get renewed next season. If animals don't particularly frighten you, and lack of any character depth is a problem for you, then don't expect to like Zoo. I didn't like the season ending, either, but maybe that's just me. They seemed to skip ahead a lot, which I don't like.
In other series news, I've been watching the Strain (which continues to be pretty entertaining) and From Dusk Til Dawn (the series on El Rey network). I think the Strain is on FX. Both series are about vampires. The Strain is a more scientifically plausible look at how a vampire plague might spread, while From Dusk Til Dawn is a refreshingly latino (or spanish or mexican, whatever works for you) look at vampirism, and how a vampire strip club is the center of the vampire religion. Based off the movie with George Clooney, the series basically retells the same tale as the movie, then branches off into the various plots and pitfalls of the various characters. So, basically a soap opera, with lots of shootings and some nudity to spice up the usual whining and backstabbing. Both shows are pretty entertaining, and both are in the middle of their seasons, if I'm not mistaken. The Strain puts forth it's own reality, and then sticks to it so there's no contradiction, and Dusk Til Dawn is too busy throwing people in front of bullets to worry about contradicting itself.
The Whispers finished up a couple weeks ago, and I didn't like that one either, mostly because all the characters were idiots. There was too much "oh my little child is in trouble" crap and not enough "kill the damn alien!" going on, for my taste, but I like a series with lots of action in it. If you're going to have an alien, I want to see the damn thing, in the flesh as it were, and not traipsing around in the guise of a human. Plus, all the adults were morons. The season finale didn't seem to make any sense, and never really explained itself. If it does come on again next summer, I doubt i'll even watch it, unless I'm so bored I can't find anything else to do.
That about covers it for the summer series. I'm eagerly awaiting the fall premieres so I can give you guys an update on those. I'm undecided if I'm going to do the full 31 days of horror movie reviews this year. I may just review several good horror movies every weekend, assuming I can find them to watch. Hey, let's be honest, there's so many crap movies floating around nowadays that it's hard to find something good to watch, and ALL of them are hyped up like they are the next 'Exorcist.' There's no way to tell which movies are good without watching them, and there's only so many hours a day I can spend watching movies to find something good to review. If I've watched two or three movies already that day, and all of them sucked, it's sort of depressing wasting all that time watching crap, you know? After a full day of that, the last thing I feel like doing is going online and reliving those wasted hours. Bleh. We'll see.
One series I am looking forward to this fall is Ash Vs Evil Dead. I don't recall what network it's on, but I think Bruce Campbell is pretty awesome, and I don't particularly like most of the other things he's been in. I've been hoping he would get back into some zombie-demon-killing movies so I could start spouting off one-liners like I used to do after watching Army of Darkness back in the early nineties. With any luck, Ash Vs Evil Dead will make my most seductive come-on line "Give me some sugar, baby." popular again, and I might get some tail for a change and not be so cranky. And yes, I know, if my favorite come-on line is a snippet from a 23-year-old zombie-killing movie, I've got some issues. Pfeh. That fact that I have issues is obvious. Don't get me started.
Til next time, happy readers.
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